building a prime mover

The end of the Tuit saga, Len sold half his property to Les O'Neil which gave him enough money to buy an outfit he designed himself, to take passengers and mail, whuich ended my job, I could have stayed driving the bus but liked freight better, Reg Ansett had been nosing around the Territory for years so we knew it was only a matter of time when he took over. :'(

Repainted in Pioneer colours and looking a bit sad, delivering mail to the railcar at larimah

This is the Bud car and box car that ran between Larimah and Darwin, the Bud car was hauled from Alice to Larimah on Stan Cawood's old Inter KR11, mate Bob Foster informed me the Bud car was turned into a coffee shop in Darwin, the bus converted into a motorhome, and the world moved on!!

What interesting photos. However, the unit is not a Budd. The design was by Commonwealth Engineering (Australia), and construction was by Gloucester Carriage & Wagon (UK). The six had an interesting and varied service life on two gauges on CR's North Australia and Central Australia lines. I ran an article in Oct.94 RNV. Four are survivors; the fate of the other two is uncertain.

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

Roderick, would you be able to put up the article you wrote for Ron? I'm pretty sure he'd be interested.

Hi Ron - I stumbled across your posts while trying to find my birth place - Maryville (NT) on a map to show someone! I will post some of the photos my Da had - you may have known him Robert 'Bob' Watson - diesel steam & refrigeration engineer. He did a lot of work modifying the RR motors with Deutsch (?sp) motors so the road trains could cope with the bukll dust of the territory. I have some great old pics of jack knifes around Renner and Larrimah. I'll get onto finding them and making a new thread.
LMK if you heard of my Da or ran across him - Maryville was named after my sister & mother. Incidentally, my Godparents were John & Dorothy Doyle - don't know if they are the same you have referred to.
Great thread - I loved reading it.

Thanks bigcam and Roderic for setting me straight on the history of the rail cars, mate Bob Foster tells me one ended up at the railway museum at Pine creek, may have posted this pic of Stan Cawood taking it to Larimah on his Gardner powered Inter KR11.

Hi Rabid, how interesting, we would all love to see your pics and stories, sorry I did not know your Dad, sounds a very clever fellow, you probably know Rotinoff came across from Russia after the war, made money converting tanks into bull dozers, died aged 52, I had no cause to stop at Maryvale as the bus carried roadside mail where I carried bulk mail straight to Larimah. I first met John and Dorothy Doyle when they started a cafe and store opposite the Banka Banka homestead, then later moved to the present location, Renner Springs. They were the greatest couple you could ever meet and became good friends with them, more so Dorothy as we had a lot of yarns together, she also had that strange Oz sense of humour!! Would love to know what happened to them, tried on the internet but no luck. On a side note, my future wife and her girlfriend were hitch hiking around Australia, got a lift with Teddy Nichols between Isa and Darwin, broke down at Banka for a couple of days, very proper at mealtimes, dressed for dinner, stations in those days were very formal and civilized, so old teddy made it to Maryvale and pulled in no doubt to make repairs, my wife who is English met another english lady there and apparently had a lot in common, any relation? This was the winter of 1958. I later met the girls in Alice springs looking for a lift to Adelaide, the only one other than me using the South road was a Siamese guy named Percy Lake so they had no option but to come with me in an old Foden, took about 8 days to get to Adelaide with digging out of sand bogs, repairing tyres etc so we got pretty friendly, other than Dorothy she was the first white girl to ever smile at me so I was smitten! I used to carry scrap metal down, go out to the growers and buy about 25 tons of spuds,onions, pumpkins with cash, no Government paperwork!! hardy stuff that would travel the rough road, then sell them around Darwin, ended up going to England and marrying her, still going strong. attatching a picture of me on the left digging out of a sand trap

the old steam train was also known as "leaping lena" i have a photo somewhere that i took when was young fella going to school in katherine in the 60's &70's you could just make out the remains of the sign writing